An illuminating and exhaustive look at the stage-by-stage changes that turned the ‘normal’ countries of eastern Europe into Soviet clones

T
ravelling to eastern Europe during the communist years was to enter a world
immediately and obviously different from our own. Yet just a generation
earlier, countries such as East Germany, Hungary and Poland would have
seemed no more alien to a visitor than, say, Italy or Greece. Detailing the
transformation of what were once “normal” countries into Soviet clones in
the years immediately after the second world war is the task Anne Applebaum
has set herself in this book, which draws on a wealth of material from
recently opened archives, interviews and ­personal accounts translated for
the first time.

When Red Army soldiers started pouring over the borders of eastern Europe in
early 1945, they were widely greeted as bringers of freedom. Yet goodwill
towards the liberators soon gave way to horror at the looting, random
violence — and worse. ­Robert Bialek, one of the few active, underground
communists in the